What is encrypted email?

When you send email using regular SMTP servers the email you send is sent plain text over the network. Plain text means that, with proper network sniffiing tools, the email can be read by anybody with access to the network traffic.

The internet was a much more naive place when the original SMTP standard was developed. It has since been enhanced to include an option to encrypt the email traffic when it is sent from the email client to the server.

Why does encrypted email matter to an environmental monitoring system?

One of the main problems stems from hosting your email with GMail or Office 365 and other cloud based email providers. In the interests of security and confidentiality, the cloud providers typically reject all incoming connections sent over a non-encrypted channel.

If you wish to use a cloud based email provider like GMail or Office 365, you will need to buy a environmental monitor with built-in encrypted email support or use seperate software to read the values from the environment monitor and that supports encrypted email. A good example of that software is AVTECH's Device ManageR software used to manage their Room Alert range of monitors.